So the case is sure to prove controversial and the world will be watching to see how the courts handle the matter in the weeks and months to come.

As Loorz, now 17, explained to me last week, the decision to sue the government came only after seeing the failures of the Executive and Legislative branches in addressing the problem.

Last May, when the lawsuits were first filed, Loorz shared his reasons for suing the government with a post on GOOD. (Full disclosure: I asked him to write the piece, and edited it.) The whole essay is powerful and well worth reading, but here are a couple core takeaway points.

Today, I and other fellow young people are suing the government, for handing over our future to unjust fossil fuel industries, and ignoring the right of our children to inherit the planet that has sustained all of civilization. I will join with youth and attorneys in every state to demand that our leaders live and govern as if our future matters.

The government has a legal responsibility to protect the future for our children. So we are demanding that they recognize the atmosphere as a commons that needs to be preserved, and commit to a plan to reduce emissions to a safe level.

Loorz and his fellow plaintiffs – all minors – do have help in this mission from some elders.

A couple of years ago, Loorz was introduced to University of Oregon Law professor Mary Wood, who had been working for years to develop a legal theory around an “atmospheric trust.”

The theory is based on the premise, according to Wood, “that all governments hold natural resources in trust for their citizens and bear the fiduciary obligation to protect such resources for future generations.”

For you lawyers out there, “atmospheric trust litigation” is rooted in the Public Trust Doctrine, an evolution of old British “Commons Law” that has been used successfully in the past to preserve and protect natural resources – like air and water – for public use.

Wood and a number of legal experts are helping support the cases, and, yes, actual grownup attorneys will be arguing the cases in court. A non-profit, Our Children’s Trust, was also formed to help organize the legal actions.

So where do things stand ten months later after the suits were first filed?

Many of the states are trying to dismiss the case, in most cases arguing that a resource as vast as the atmosphere couldn’t be under the jurisdiction of a single state. In other words: this will have to be decided on the federal level.

So what of the federal case then? In September, Loorz and six other youth plaintiffs asked for a preliminary injunction for “immediate court intervention to compel government action on climate change.”

The “preliminary injunction” is, according to Our Children’s Trust, “essentially, a “fast track” procedure to avoid any further damage to the atmosphere.” The lawsuit targeted six federal agencies.

According to Our Children’s Trust, specifically, the preliminary injunction was filed

“to compel federal agencies to develop a comprehensive plan to prevent further increases in U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and to force government action in reducing CO2 emissions consistent with what current scientific analysis deems necessary to halt catastrophic climate change.”

“Historically there have been statute-based lawsuits, where you find a particular problem and you go after that problem. But labeling the polar bear an endangered species is not going to solve the human-made climate crisis,” said Phil Gregory, Principal Attorney with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, and co-counsel for the federal lawsuit.

“We have to approach it at the macro level. We have to say to the courts, you need to declare there’s a problem here, and order our government to do what is necessary to protect the trust.”

There have been a couple of interesting developments in the federal case since the motions were first filed. First, in December, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted the Federal Governments’ motion to transfer venue to Washington D.C., citing the “national significance of the case.”

The polluters' defense will be that they have a “legally protected cognizable interest to freely emit CO2,” according to BNA coverage.

In other words, the groups representing the oil, gas and coal industries will argue that, because they've been allowed to use the atmosphere as a pollution dump for free historically, they deserve to keep doing so. That should be interesting to watch play out in court.

Upon the judge's announcement to let the polluter interests intervene, the newcomers immediately filed a motion to dismiss the entire case. A hearing on the motions to dismiss will be held May 11.

Stay tuned for further updates from the hearings, and profiles of the other plaintiffs.

Finally, here's a short video from iMatter, Our Children's Trust, and WITNESS about Loorz's path to plaintiff-dom.

So Lara thinks that Loorz is being exploited by big bad adults and cannot think for himself.

Every time a teenager speaks up in the public square, can we assume somebody else is pulling their strings?

Why does Lara have such a low opinion of today’s youth? When you were 16, were the adults around you able to order you around for their own purposes? By that age, most people have their own mind and have developed their own personality. By that age they are considered able to enter into contracts, they can be liable for adult punishments for adult actions.

Exploitation means that the victim is coerced or fooled into an action that is against their own interest. Unless Lara has a specific allegation to make here, this is just a shameless ad hom against Loorz. A really cheap shot.

Loorz is boldly asserting his rights to defend his interests along with the interest of all of the next generations.

It’s one thing to con the kids, but how did all of the worlds scientific institutes get conned Lara? Strangely not one supports the denier position……worldwide. So Loorz is taking the same position as the majority of our planets institutions and experts on this subject.

“Two of America’s best-known companies, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, have dropped their memberships in the American Legislative Exchange Council, a low-profile conservative organization behind the national proliferation of “stand your ground” gun laws.”

“We have a longstanding policy of not taking positions on issues that don’t have a direct bearing on our company or on our industry,” said Coca-Cola Co. spokeswoman Diana Garza Ciarlante, after the soft drink giant dropped its membership in ALEC on Wednesday.

“PepsiCo, another soft drink giant, belonged to ALEC for 10 years. In January, a company vice president told ColorOfChange that it wouldn’t renew for 2012.”

“Tim Smith is a vice president with Walden Asset Management, which does what it calls socially responsible investing. He says corporate boards and top management are paying closer attention now.

“They’re scrutinizing their trade association memberships, their relationships with controversial institutes,” said Smith. “And certainly I think that companies are scrutinizing their ALEC relationship more carefully, too.

“But certainly not every corporation: On Wednesday, another well-known company, Kraft Foods, said it was keeping its membership in ALEC.

toYUM! Brands(owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s and A&W), State corporate co-chair of Kentucky and Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee member.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ALEC_Corporations

Time for all of us to stand our ground & skin this anti-“We-the-People” cat.

And I was already boycotting Kraft, Coca Cola, Pepsico, and Frito-Lay on the basis that the things they make are crap and bad for my health. Damn. Now I’m going to have to boycott them even harder. Maybe I could close my eyes really tight and say “Nnnnnggggggggaaaaahh!”?

It is a bit of an exaggeration - most stand-alone shop owners don’t make 6 figure take home incomes.

But beyond that, ALEC does not represent even the 1% top income earners’ true interests.

I see it as corporate versus individual, community, and small business interests. Most of those corporate donors are transnationals (look up the difference between that and multinational) whose economic interests may well be in conflict with their host country’s interests and even their constitutions. Why they get to drown out the voices of flesh-and-blood persons is beyond me.

In the current US political environment (and probably all of the developed world), speech is not free. As evidenced by Heartland Institute activities, it is for sale.

You haven’t a clue about small business, so cut the mindless crap. Very few small business owners net anything near $100k per year, let alone $250k, & many if not most lose money for many if not most years, & most go out of business if not bankrupt within a couple of years or so, so most by far are among the 99%ers.

“According to compensation survey administrator PayScale in 2010, the average income of small business owners varies widely depending upon their level of experience. For example, small business owners with less than one year of experience in running an organization earn an annual salary ranging from $34,392 to $75,076. Those with more than 10 years experience, on the other hand, earn upwards of $105,757 per year.”

It’s going to be so sad to watch these kids have all their hopes and dreams and moral outrage crushed with no more passion or interest than you would see from someone putting out a cigarette.

Let me see… on one side, we have legions of enormous corporate interests, that collectively have successfully bribed and lobbied the most powerful government on earth into basically letting them do anything they want. Also on this side is the majority of the public, who fund their comfortable lifetstyles built upon enormous carbon emissions, with jobs at the aforementioned legions of enormous corporate interests.

On the other side, we have a bunch of kids with the resources of their part-time McJobs and a couple of bottle drives. They probably even complain if the thermostat isn’t keeping them at 20 C +/- 2 C.

Win or lose, this keeps the issue in the public eye and that’s important.

Here’s what we knew in ‘82;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmpiuuBy-4s

Here’s what we know now;
http://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climate_change.html

Actually I’m starting to worry about all those optomistic opinions of what will happen with with more rain and sun in Canada. The bulk of Canada has no soil. I grew up on the coast, the farms grow food in soil that is deep thick rich and black. In the praries we have this layer of light brown dried out sandy dirt that barely supports grass which is thinly layered on top of rock hard clay. Adding sun and water won’t make this stuff support more plant life. To plant trees in new neighbourhoods we have to dig out ‘clay pots’ in the ground in which we place some imported soil and a tree.

You’re absolutely right. The Canadian mid-continent is a famous geological formation known as a shield - a shield of granite and basalt mostly. It is overlain by a very thin soil that won’t support modern agriculture. There will be no breadbasket there. Grasses, sedges, perhaps. Maybe you could grow bio fuel crops?

Siberia, on the other hand is mostly permafrost. When it warms it will turn into a marshy mush - and it also is not very deep soil. Not friendly to combines and tractors.

Even if these latitudes had rich, tropical-like soil, you have to realize that the arid regions of the temperate zone will enlarge - Texas will be more like Arizona - and you will be left with a smaller land area to farm on. But even that is a what-if that is not.

Future agriculture will have to feed more people from fewer acres/hectares.

Ice road thaw is already making it hard to get into northern areas for drilling. We just use bigger trucks for now. :-)

Most folks don’t understand that in many northern areas they rely of driving on ice. If that ceases, they are paralyzed. I believe that a few years ago one town had to have supplies airlifted in.

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/land-road.shtml?page=land

Foot navigation gets harder as Pingos collapse. Pingo’s are the Cryogenic version of a volcano, and often the only land marks visible by foot.

http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/docs/v-g/pingo/index.aspx

Construction must also be redone in this changine landscape. Folks are often suprised when they find out how you build of permafrost. Dig a hole in the ice, drop a poll down, and fill with water. When it freezes you now have something to which you can attach a house or other solid structure.

Gwynn Dyer points out that the politeness that exists between Canada and the US will cease when they start to suffer from the effects of climate change. We’re already seeing a lot of competition over water resources. Now what would that be like if they were looking at food shortages?

OilMan, interesting comment about ice roads. The usable time on the main ice road, the Tibbitt to Contwoyton Winter Road, has been decreasing at a rate of 0.8 days per year (this information can be found by Googling, I don’t know whether it is statistically significant or not but worrying none the less).

Tim Patterson, well known AGW denier from Carleton University consults with Industry on this road. He has assured the companies which use this road that it will be viable for 20 to 30 years. It will be long gone by then if current warming keeps a pace. I hope the companies sue him for all he has when their billion dollar investments in the various mines become worthless because of the lack of access when it is no longer possible to make the ice roads.

If you would talk to people instead of lamenting their ignorance,you would realize that the ‘denying’ relates to the fact that predicting climate has to be an act of faith. How can you possibly verify that you have fortold the future ?

Not that anyone seems impressed with the note that co2 rise follows warming: not vice versa. Plus we have been coming out of a mini ice age.

Europe has been colder than past experience for a couple of winters now - while the heat is thought to have gone northward. That might even be related to reported dissipation of transAtlantic currents carrying heat from the Gulf of Mexico. Shift in patterns of energy flow has good potental to make fools of us all.

Hey. Ask a weatherman. Chaotic systems present surprises with regularity. Anyone looking at past fluctuations should be forgiven for thinking the only constant is change.

Ah, the voice of reason in the sea of ad hom attacks and recriminations in these comments. It’s refreshing to read your common sense response but, unfortunately, it will be quickly voted down by the rabid ‘believers’ here.

Let’s suppose that there is an element of faith in any prediction, whether it is tomorrow’s forecast or your coming home in one piece.

When a scientist says that x is likely true with a 90% confidence interval, you could say that the element of faith required to act on x is 10%.

The FAR uses the words “extremely unlikely” when assessing the probability that the current warming is natural (the result of internal processes to be exact). That translates to a 5% probability. So, the “faith” element involved in acting upon the FAR is 5%.

Now, what is the risk of inaction?

“Plus we have been coming out of a mini ice age.”

What? What mini ice age? If you are talking about the Little Ice Age, it may not have been a global event. Some glaciations have been detected around the world, but the timing differs a good deal, making them probable localized events. There are those who argue that we are overdue for an ice age since the interglacials of the past 400,000 years typically last 11,500 years and the one we are in has lasted 12,000 years so far. But the significant industrial age pulse of carbon dioxide may well keep us on a warming trend instead.

“Europe has been colder than past experience for a couple of winters now”

Local phenomenon that on its own is irrelevant to the global picture. Each of the last 324 months have been above the long term average global temperature (NCDC Feb report). Also from the 2011 Global NCDC report:

“Including 2011, all eleven years in the 21st century so far (2001–2011) rank among the 13 warmest in the 132-year period of record. Only one year during the 20th century, 1998, was warmer than 2011.”

NOAA National Climatic Data Center, State of the Climate: Global Analysis for Annual 2011, published online December 2011, retrieved on April 6, 2012 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2011/13.

Predicting local weather and predicting long-term global climate changes are different animals. It’s like boiling a pot of water. I can pretty accurately predict when the pot will be boiling (climate forecasting) but telling you where the bubbles will form is tough for mere mortals (weather forecasting).

It is also a fact that increasing CO2 concentrations will cause warming.

It is called a positive feedback.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. If you don’t accept it, then get your parka on because it’s freezing outside.

Many greenhouse gas sinks (ocean CO2, permafrost methane, methane clathrates/hydrates) lose their ability to store the greenhouse gases when they are at higher temperatures. Ocean heat content has been rising. Methane releases are occuring in thawing permafrost areas, methane releases have been observed in the Arctic Ocean.

The fact that a CO2 rise has followed warming in no way invalidates the fact that adding CO2 will precipitate a rise in ocean temperatures and land surface temperatures.

“One of the world’s most widely known and respected senior scientists tells ABC News that current denial about the basic daunting realities of manmade global warming is “just foolishness.”

“There is virtually unanimous consensus among the world’s scientists who work in the area that human beings are the major reason that this is so (the world’s average temperature rising),” writes Raven from London. “Because, just as first noted by the Swedish chemist Arrhenius in 1895, when you add more carbon dioxide or other co-called greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, you make it warmer.” http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=16049659

When I first saw Opits comment, I thought sheesh, not another denier newbie. We have all seen it, the arguments that denier newbies come out with. The CO2 lag, the ice age, ask a weatherman, its the sun, grapes in England, Greenland was green etc etc.

Then I saw how long he has been a member at Desmog for…nearly 3 years. Even 3 years ago WUWT had given up on those memes. They are now onto sensitivity.

You would have to of just emerged from cryogenic sleep, or be part of a paid professional denier community to say such things.

Why would I change noting the basic facts that affect a discussion where everyone is busy citing an alleged concensus provided by international political authority ? I do know the difference between scientific method and ‘proving’ a forgone conclusion. Since fortunetelling falls outside the provenance of science I prefer the political explanation.

I’m sure you are aware of the Talking Points rebutting any argument made in advance. They are a staple of propaganda. Alleging a dichotomy of possibilities in a complex and changing world attempts to refute ignorance by chanting louder.

The essential difficulties remain the same. One cannot convincing allege we have affected nature’s balance when discussing a vector analysis of unmeasured and unknown and non identified variable drivers. Even those conceding that point in favour of solely the polar possibility can then point out that supposed calculations are poisoned by assumptions of multiplier effects and want to improve modeling which is failing in practice.

Where then is the science ? All we are left with is conflation of endlessly discussing pollution in terms of a wild card dispersed by water transformations and wind instead of the problems of known toxins ( and ignored proliferation of chemical wildcards ) or even more powerful greenhouse gases like methane. But noting coal ash for instance, such as resources at Sourcewatch catalogue, is at least an attempt to concentrate on immediately obvious and verifiable harms.

Nor do energy companies then have to then bother defending the choices of despoiling planetary surface and aquifer in favour of a dispute which is essentially a farce of chanting ‘everything is settled and we must do something.’

Indeed we should. However we are not bothering to analyse the institutional drivers affecting discussion - such as military interest in energy geopolitics - or likely mass starvation and thirst being stimulated by those institutions ( something the UN should be quite aware of ) while our economic house of cards is failing per past experience and predictions.

It is in this scenario calling for international energy taxation proposed by the beneficiary of a scheme which robs nations of both autonomy and economic resources falls under preplanned global crash and enforcement of a stabilization into serfdom : new colonialism.

But supposedly this is a scientific discussion about an alleged problem overriding all other concerns.

Look before you leap is always good advice : nor is it limited to one hypothesis when we are running out of drinking water and our food supply is being patented resulting in mass farmer suicides.

And resource depletion does not affect merely energy but also minerals. Our industrial technology is driven by profit rather than sustainability. It is a recipe for self destruction regardless of human co2 emissions….which will abate soon enough one way or another.

What a gish gallop of distracting and unfounded assertions that do not address any of the counterpoint provided to the original allegations served up by opit.

As to the grammar, logic, and semantics of the above, I feel like I just got finished reading The Jabberwok. There are a number of sentences and paragraphs that are just difficult to parse and others that jump to conclusions that do not follow.

Will Opit address:

What mini ice age are we still coming out of? Is it global?

Does a local cooling (Europe’s winter) invalidate the premise of anthropogenic warming? If yes, why?

Is the NCDC global report for global average temperatures true or fraudulent?

Is carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas or not? If it is, then a rise in CO2 will bring increased global average temperatures, sooner or later.

What evidence is there that the global circulation models don’t work? (There is evidence that their predictions have been rather accurate, even Hansen’s crude 1982 model.)

“As to the grammar, logic, and semantics of the above, I feel like I just got finished reading The Jabberwok. There are a number of sentences and paragraphs that are just difficult to parse and others that jump to conclusions that do not follow.”

Glad I wasn’t the only one. Opit took a lot of words to say…….nothing really. Didn’t address anything. Just an incoherent non cohesive rant. Like it was several auto reply bots that didn’t have their messages in sync. Just joined a whole heap of mish mashed sentences together, without addressing anyone. Opit, I apologize for saying earlier that you were a paid professional denier …….. because it’s almost apparent you are a bot.

Over the years, we still find that most all manmade climate change deniers are vested one way or another in the fossil fuel extraction & subservient industries, & routinely recycle their deceitful, debunked anti-science nonsense from denier blogs like WattsUpHisButters, no different than the deceitful creationists do with anti-science nonsense from evolution denier blogs & sites funded by the infamous & misnomered Discovery Institute & its allies.

“Win or lose, this keeps the issue in the public eye and that’s important.”

That’s exactly right. Anything that keeps the subject in the spotlight, especially in the MSM is a good thing. Anyone with an interest in a stable environment for current and future generations would have no problem with this action. Anyone with an interest in opposing cleantech competition, opposing legislation that affects fossil fuel companies or actions that oppose right wing memes or funding, would be keen to see actions such as Loorz out of the spotlight.

In all honesty, the casual way that this teen seemed to hit all the common memes of the AGW group, especially the “kids and grandkids” theme had me wondering how much coaching was involved and how radical his parents were.

Have you ever seen the documentary “Jesus Camp”? I was imediated reminded of that while listening to this boy. Sadly, I think he’s going to wake up 10 years from now and wonder where his childhood went to. It’s not normal for kids to be this radical about ANY set of ideas.

“In all honesty, the casual way that this teen seemed to hit all the common memes of the AGW group, especially the “kids and grandkids” theme had me wondering how much coaching was involved and how radical his parents were.”

Chas, the other side of the argument is similar to the smoking debate 20-30 years ago. You are part of the “smoking is not harmful, how rediculous” crowd back then. Resistant to evidence and logic, defiant in defence. Now decades later you know it’s foolish to defend the health effects, but you are more than entitled to “enjoy” smoking yourself.

Loorz is part of the crowd back then that actually listened to the majority of scientists & doctors who warned of the ill affects & chose to listen to their message instead of paid industry deniers & chose not to fall for clever marketing.

Chas before you are dead, you will get to see the ill effects of global warming. Your children will definately experience it and your grandchildren will have an attitude similar to people today about smoking. They might smoke, but everyone pretty much accepts the science. Your stance will look foolish and archaic within a decade.

Right there at the very top of the US Constitution. It should be a no-brainer.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Clearly it says that government is for now and for the future. For us and for our children.

So what if it is the Preamble. Um… you mean, none of that counts?

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE

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The city of Richmond, California is the home of oil giant Chevron’s domestic headquarters. It also happen to be the ninth city in the United States to file a lawsuit against fossil fuel companies for their contributions to global climate change.